


Hunger

by Viridian5



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Character(s), Drama, Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-02-25
Updated: 2001-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:38:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rev counsels Harper but mostly tries to counsel himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Harper 2.0" Watching the med bay scene in this episode, I was even more creeped out by Rev than usual. He knows Harper is terrified of him, yet he keeps coming [closer](http://viridian.shriftweb.org/tooclosepics.htm).... This is my idea of what might have been running through his head as they spoke.
> 
> Discussing Rev with Dawn Sharon inspired me to write this.

The images of the massacre at Brandenburg Tor I’d just seen ran over and over in my mind. The violence, the slaughter, the millions of humans slain as food or impregnated as hosts for Magog young. Most of my people remembered Brandenburg with pride, and so much of me thrilled at the thought of it no matter how firmly I clung to The Way. I lived on a ship crewed mostly by humans, and I still remembered the succulent taste of them. They smelled so good.... Some days, when my perpetual starvation had more of a hold on me than usual, I obsessed over the remembered flavor of humanity.

The longer I abstained, the more my hunger seemed like a separate being within me. It was a creature I had to cage carefully. No matter how it burned or cried or ate at me, it could not be allowed freedom.

No wonder Harper had been terrified of me lately if that data transfer the Perseid librarian had recently forced into his cranial database made him see the events of Brandenburg. I forgave Harper the vile things he’d said in my own tongue. In fact, I doubted he even knew what he’d said to me. The data overlay seemed to take him over utterly at times, impelling him to build machines he didn’t understand or attack me with martial skills he didn’t possess on his own.

It was hurting him, perhaps killing him. Humans couldn’t live healthy lives with that much brain activity, mental torment, or insomnia for very long.

I didn’t like to think that I had favorites, but I had a special affection for Seamus Harper. He had more than enough personal experience and reason to hate the Magog yet treated me with respect and friendship. I was well aware that I was the only Magog he would ever trust.

Sometimes I felt myself unworthy of that trust. It had taken only a few choice insults in my language to get me to throw off my self-control and attack him. The memory of his heat soaking into me even through my robe and fur, the pounding of his pulse beneath the soft, sweat-slick skin of his neck against my fingers, and that wondrous scent of fear and pain he gave off haunted me still.

I had to ask for his forgiveness.

When the med bay door opened, I saw that Dylan and Beka had put shackles on Harper at his wrists and ankles. For his own safety. Harper strained against the cuffs at the sight of me, his taut body sending out renewed waves of fear scent. The scent of pain had been perpetual since the data download the Perseid had forced on him.

I would be strong. My pain belongs to the Divine. It is like air; it is like water.

It is like having a sumptuous meal staked down waiting for the touch of my claws and teeth.

Concentrating on speech instead might help. "I... I have seen your nightmares and I understand my role in them." I should have remained near the wall, far from his pallet, but instead I picked up a cushion and approached him. "Please. Please, Harper, accept my apology."

He sat up quickly and stayed as far from my claws as he could while I put the cushion down to give him something to lean against while sitting. His pale skin gleamed with terror sweat, making saliva flood my mouth. Sweat added further piquancy to human flesh. It increased my desire to lick him. The skin around the data port implant on his neck was reddened, abused looking, and smelled _open_ from what the Perseid had done to him. Inviting.

As I quickly backed away, Harper eased down onto the cushion. "Forgive me," I said.

Harper tried to look at me, but his eyes kept darting away. How many humans would try that hard, when they had so much reason to fear and hate my people? With that eyewitness account of the Brandenburg slaughter playing in his dreams, he had even more reason than usual.

"It’s not you, Rev." His voice sounded strained, his breathing fast and a little labored. He’d barely slept since the download, and the strain of all the data crowding his brain stressed his body. "It’s just every time I look at you, all I can see is people dying. Bodies, massacre. I got a lifetime of nightmares knocking around my skull in there, and I can’t do anything to hold them all in. All I ever wanted was... to know things... you know... how they worked, where they came from, and now I do, and all I can see over and over and over again is people dying." His despair, desperation, and pain were palpable things. "What do I do, Rev? How do I make it stop?" But still he trusted me enough to ask my advice.

"You need the one thing that all your knowledge can’t provide. Wisdom."

Harper had an excellent mind on his own. Quick, voracious. His engineering skills were completely self-taught. In my most shameful moments I sometimes wondered how his brain would taste.

"Wisdom." Harper laughed humorlessly. "Great. Show me the yellow brick road, Mr. Wizard; how do I get wisdom?"

He wanted my guidance. When I reached for him, he flinched and began to hyperventilate. I stroked the air centimeters from his hair, not daring to get closer no matter how much I wanted to comfort him, touch him....

"Let go, Harper. Let go. Give yourself over to the Divine. All that you are, all that you have, including your pain. Calm your breath." I should follow my own teachings, so I took a deep breath. Harper closed his eyes and did the same. It touched me deeply. "Repeat: ‘My pain belongs to the Divine. It is like air; it is like water.’"

Harper tried to breathe slowly and deeply. "My pain belongs to the Divine. It is like air; it is like water."

Hearing the mantra calmed me as well. "Good. Again."

He repeated the words more forcefully. "My pain belongs to the Divine. It is like air; it is like water." He grimaced. "It’s like a freaking freight train going through my brain. Are you sure this works?"

"Harper." I had to make him see. "Think of hunger, think what it must be like to go days, even weeks, without food. Now imagine what it would be like to know that in the midst of that starvation," I had to take a deep breath, "you could eat, feast, satiate your hunger, but only by killing the people that you love. That is my pain. It is with me each day."

I closed my eyes. Once upon a time I’d thought that living among humans, coming to know them, would lessen my desire to devour them. It hadn’t worked that way at all. I loved my humans, but the part of me that hungered still wanted to share that final intimacy with them, but now to celebrate them as I feasted, _know_ them, feel them sustain me, love them through every drop of hot, rich blood. Only the knowledge of how final and irrevocable that communion would be stopped me.

And, wide-eyed, sympathetic, he listened to me. I’d never known a greater love for a human as I did now, and that love only stoked my hunger.

"_My_ pain belongs to the Divine," I said. "It is," I took another deep breath, "like air; it is like water."

Harper made a visible effort to calm himself. "My pain belongs to the Divine. It is like air; it is like water." I mouthed the words with him. His breathing slowed, his body stilled, as he began to whisper the mantra again. At some point I’d put my hand near his head again, the tip of my claw nearly stirring the fine blond hair in its proximity.

The Andromeda Ascendant gave an alert. "Hostile vessel approaching off starboard bow. Activating emergency measures." Jeger must have returned for the information trapped in Harper’s cranial database.

I was torn between the relief that I had an excuse to leave the torment of his presence and the urge to stay, alleviate his pain, wallow in the delicious scent of him. Following The Way involved a certain necessary masochism. "I have to go."

If Harper hadn’t been restrained, he would have leapt at me. Instead he sat up and strained at the manacles on his wrists. "No. Please, Rev, let me help."

"Harper, Dylan was most adamant."

"Rev, right now I’m the smartest guy in the universe but that don’t count for squat if I can’t help my friends." His pleading reverberated through me, further stoking my hunger. But everything about him did that. I had to look away. "Please, Rev, you can trust me," he said. "I promise."

The part of me that wanted to bury my head in his belly, biting through his soft skin to taste the treasures beneath it, liked him manacled just as he was.

I unshackled him, despite being certain that he would get into well-intentioned trouble if left loose. But we all had to have the choice of following or denying our natures. Without choice, The Way meant nothing.

 

### End


End file.
